Mineral Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe has warned that the South African mining industry must carry out skills development to prepare itself and its employees for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). Automated mining activities were no longer scarce, he pointed out; the 4IR was coming.

He highlighted that, while the 4IR was destroying old jobs, it was also creating new jobs. The country’s mines had to develop new skills as a result.

“The more we improve technology in the mining industry, the safer the industry is,” he emphasised. “Technology must be part of finding solutions to many of these [mining] problems.”

Regarding the Mining Charter, he observed that it was “part of the broader South African transformation agenda. … The Mining Charter was but one tool that was drafted to guide us in the transformation of this society.”

Transformation was not about replacing white faces with black faces, but about real economic empowerment. He cautioned that economic growth without transformation would only sustain the country’s previous patterns of inequality, while transformation without growth would be narrow and unsustainable.

Broad transformation was required because of South Africa’s history, he highlighted. The black majority had been excluded from any meaningful role in the economy, other than as labour, for centuries. They had suffered from racial discrimination and oppression, resulting in exclusion, exploitation and the concomitant suffering.

Transformation was a particularly central issue with regard to mining. The mining sector in the past had been a mini-State within the State in South Africa with, for example, its own security. He reiterated that, in the past, black mineworkers had experienced inhumane working and living conditions.

Mantashe was delivering the keynote address to a colloquium hosted by the University of South Africa, in Pretoria, in partnership with the minerals technology and beneficiation science council Mintek, on Monday.